


A Graduation

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Feels, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Science Bros, Science Bros and the Science bb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 09:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12105684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: Tony introduces Bruce to Peter Parker. Like any experiment, the effects are hard to predict.





	A Graduation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrstater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/gifts).



> This fic was written for mrstater's birthday, based on the prompt "Tony, Bruce, Peter, and graduation." 
> 
> Happy birthday, mrstater! I hope this gift brings a smile to your face and extra happiness to your day. <3
> 
> (This fic is my gift to her, but if any other readers would like to give themselves a gift, just click over to mrstater's fics! There's so much MCU goodness there, not to mention Star Wars, Fargo, Game of Thrones, and every other good thing. Treat yo self and read it all. ;))

Bruce Banner had been back on earth for less than a day when Tony Stark appeared in his fastest Iron Man suit, looked him over, asked exactly two questions ( _Where have you been?_ and _Why wasn’t I invited?_ ), and all but forcibly abducted him. Bruce found himself in a sprawling high-tech facility with a giant _A_ on the side. The Avengers had done pretty well for themselves in his absence. He said as much, and wondered about the pain that flickered behind Tony’s scoff. 

It took them days to catch up on Bruce’s extra-planetary adventures and Tony’s earthbound ones. _Adventures_ was an overly optimistic word they settled on by unspoken agreement. Privately, Bruce thought they’d both spent most of the last two years suffering. Tony introduced Bruce to some of the newest Avengers, but they spent enough time alone that Bruce started to wonder if Tony was trying to keep him to himself. Not that he minded. He’d spent so much time away from his world and away from himself that the weight of missing home and friends was only just catching up with him. They holed up in one of an array of labs and for a while it was almost like old times. 

Until Tony handed him a Starktech tablet displaying a glowing document. 

“Tony,” Bruce said carefully. “Is this your will?”

Tony had dropped back onto a wheeled stool as soon as he passed the tablet to Bruce. Head down and eyes averted, he was the picture of concentration as he stared at the piece of circuitry between his hands. Which meant he wasn’t thinking about that at all. 

“Read it,” Tony said. 

There was some complicated legalese followed by what looked like a very inappropriate joke included with the “of sound mind and body” statement. Bruce sighed and skimmed until he saw his own name. 

_In the event of my death, I leave Dr. Bruce Banner my entire wardrobe._

It was a joke. Tony was joking. Bruce felt unspeakably relieved. “Are you saying you don’t like the way I dress? And is this the number for a _tailor?_ ”

“Those are both loaded questions, neither of which I’m prepared to answer until I’m safe in the afterlife. Buy a Ouija Board and ask me again sometime. Keep reading.” 

_I also bequeath to Bruce all the properties listed (and their laboratories), along with the sole rights to use them and approve them for use, and the sum of one billion dollars to be granted in cash rather than stock and property._

Bruce’s brain stuttered like a bad engine. When he finally managed a focused thought, it was simple. 

_Oh._

Tony was serious. Bruce’s eyes were burning dangerously, so he muttered the first thing he could think of. 

“They’ll say I’m a gold digger.”

Tony looked relieved at Bruce’s response. “You mean you’re not?” he fired back with a smirk. “I’ve heard you complain about all the grants you’ve lost over the years. I can put two and two together, Bruce.” His tone shifted into something marginally more serious. “Anyway, let people think what they want. You could have worse company in the gossip columns than me. I’ve missed our old scandals. Remember when the _Enquirer_ claimed I was cheating on Pepper with you? God, those were the days.”

A laugh rattled out of Bruce’s throat at the memory. Still, he shook his head at the document in front of him. “Tony, I can’t—“

Tony shushed him forcefully. “It’s done. Unless you want me to jump through all the legal hoops to revise this—which will kill me—and then you’ll still get it all. If you try to turn it down after I bite the big one, I swear on my own grave that I’ll haunt you forever.” 

Bruce couldn’t quite decide whether he was touched or horrified by that, so he settled on shaking his head again. After a moment, he realized he was smiling. 

“Keep reading,” Tony urged. “This is the most important part.” 

_Finally, I leave to Bruce the care and management of Peter Benjamin Parker._

“I’m no legal expert,” Bruce said evenly, “but I’m pretty sure you can’t bequeath a person.” 

“I consulted my lawyer—“

“Did he agree, or did he stop arguing and give up?”

Tony was silent; Bruce sighed. 

“Who is Peter Parker?” he asked at last. 

Tony grinned. 

***

“Bruce Banner! I wrote a paper about you in seventh grade! And I don’t know if you remember this, but you gave a lecture on the possibilities of gamma radiation at Columbia a long time ago and I watched that DVD every day when I was five. I didn’t understand any of it at the time, but it was my favorite movie. I dressed up as both of you for Halloween. Not at the same time, obviously. Although that’s a great idea now that I think about it. Maybe this year.”

Peter Parker was a skinny teenager who had demonstrated only a narrow repertoire of behaviors in Bruce’s presence, including, but not limited to, wide-eyed staring and barely coherent speech. Bruce blinked and tried not to imagine what an Iron Man/Hulk combination costume would look like. Tony, predictably, looked intrigued by the idea. Bruce moved quickly to interrupt that train of thought. 

“So, Peter,” he began. “You’re Tony’s…intern?”

“I’m, um—Mr. Stark, did you tell him who I am?”

Tony clapped the kid on the shoulder. “Bruce, This is Spider-Man.”

Bruce could think of only one response. 

“Um. Who?”

Peter Parker visibly wilted. “You haven’t heard of me? What about the viral videos?”

Bruce shook his head sheepishly. “I’ve been…out of town. Off-planet, in fact. Sorry.”

“ _WHAT?”_ Peter was nearly vibrating by the time he funneled his obvious excitement into words. “Where were you? What were you doing—what was it _like—_ were you fighting aliens—?”

Tony inserted himself the moment Peter was forced to stop for breath. 

“Anyway,” he said in a no-nonsense tone that clearly stated _we will talk about the aliens later, my young padawan, “_ he’s an Avenger-in-training, for all intents and purposes. Part of the team, but mostly unofficially, at least until he’s gotten a little more experience under his belt. And graduated from high school.”

Bruce blinked. “He’s in high school? Tony, we need to talk about this—“

“It’s fine,” Peter interrupted, mostly managing to cover his desperation. “My grades haven’t slipped at all this year. I’ve found the balance between crime fighting and homework. I even managed to keep up with the academic decathlon team.”

“The decathlon team,” Bruce echoed flatly, and pulled Tony aside. “Tony—“

“Pepper’s fine with it,” Tony hedged. 

Pepper Potts was the only consistent source of professionalism and sane decision-making in Tony’s life. Bruce wondered whether the entire world had gone crazy in his absence. 

“She is?” he asked, and couldn’t quite control his tone of disbelief. 

“It was letting the wall-crawler act on his own, or act with a little guidance. Which one do you think is the way to go?”

Bruce sighed. “You built him his suit, didn’t you?”

Tony turned back to Peter and diplomatically changed the subject. “Come on, Parker. Bruce and I could use an assistant today.”

Peter’s eyes didn’t quite sparkle, but it was a near thing. When he followed them, the bounce in his step was reminiscent of an overeager puppy. He cleared his throat. “It will be an honor to work with you, Dr. Banner. There’s a photo of you on the wall in the lab at school. I, uh…I’m part of the club that requested it be put there.” 

Bruce felt several things all at once. He was touched that his picture was allowed anywhere near a place of learning, and he was embarrassed by the gesture and the admiration it implied. He even experienced a quick brush with both pride and vindication. Confronted with all those emotions, along with many more he couldn’t define, Bruce responded in the only way he could. 

He sighed. 

***

Summer came. Peter stayed for long stretches at the Avengers’ facility and spent almost every free moment in the lab.

“Where do your friends think you are?” Bruce asked, curious. 

“Summer camp,” Peter answered. His snarky grin was a mirror image of Tony’s. 

Bruce still had doubts about the wisdom of encouraging underage crime-fighting, but he had to admit that Peter Parker was a very good lab assistant. He was knowledgeable, punctual, and, most importantly, excited to be there. He learned the layout of the lab they favored, grew increasingly adept at operating the computer system, and even suggested some projects they could work on. He had a lot of ideas for upgrades to the Spider-Man suit. Tony agreed that he could have upgrades if he could build them himself. Peter worked on them in every spare moment. 

Bruce often found it difficult to hold up his half of a conversation under the best of circumstances, but Peter was an exception to that rule. Once he made it past his vibrating-with-excitement phase, he turned out to be a very bright young man. It reminded Bruce of the best part of his teaching days: being surrounded by the heat and light of intelligent minds like fires to be fed. Peter asked constant questions about their work and Bruce found he didn’t mind answering. He had always loved sharing knowledge.

Tony, however, was another story. Bruce tried to work out exactly what had drawn Tony to this kid. He’d never known him to have a drive toward mentorship. In fact, he’d developed an intense aversion to causing any sort of harm, and mentorship increased the probability of being a bad influence to an almost comical degree. Nevertheless, Tony was always ready and willing to offer advice on Peter’s projects in the lab, and often called him in to watch when they were doing something he could learn from. It took Bruce a while to recognize the dynamic between the two of them, because it was something he’d never experienced himself. Peter looked at Tony almost like a father.

Not that Tony always deserved it. He had a tendency to look up after hours of non-stop work, look at Peter like he’d only just remembered his existence, and then ask Bruce, “Have you fed Peter today?”

Each time, Bruce considered his options. Sometimes, he reminded Tony that _none_ of them had eaten and they’d better fix their nutritional practices before FRIDAY outed them to Pepper. Sometimes he agreed and told Peter to go eat. On one memorable occasion, he’s remarked to Tony, “He’s not a pet fish.”

Peter swelled indignantly, which was a meager feat, given his size. “Yeah, you don’t have to feed me,” he agreed. There was a pause filled only by the click of Tony’s tools and the weight of Peter’s thoughts. “I mean,” he said after a moment. “There _isn’t_ any food in here. So…”

“I told you he needs to eat,” Tony started, but Bruce was already speaking. “FRIDAY,” he said. “Send Peter some food. You should eat too, Tony.”

“I’ll eat when I’m dead,” was his sage reply. Peter snorted with laughter; Bruce sighed.

***

The view from the roof of Avengers Tower in New York City was breathtaking. Bruce had loved to stand up there, once upon a time, despite the cold wind that smelled of car exhaust. The city had looked like an elaborate splash of stars against the velvet black of the night. Now, of course, he’d seen a lot more stars and planets, and even visited a few. He wondered if the view would seem a little less spectacular in comparison. He wasn’t sure he’d ever find out. The Avengers’ upstate facility also had a roof and a view, albeit not much of one. Outside the circle of security lights, there was nothing but black. He haunted the roof anyway. It was an ideal place for solitude—or so Bruce thought. He rethought his opinion when he discovered Peter staring at the stars. 

“I wonder if I could swing through the trees if I tried,” Peter said without looking at them. The surrounding forest was only visible as the deeper black edge where the stars stopped. “I tried running simulations. FRIDAY gave me a ninety-nine percent chance of breaking bones in high-speed tree collisions.”

“Not great odds,” Bruce acknowledged, and drifted to his usual spot. Peter’s silence was busier than the solitary kind Bruce preferred. Bruce could almost hear him thinking. He felt reasonably sure it wasn’t about forest-bound web-slinging. “So you’re changing your name to Tree Spider, I guess.” 

Peter made a face that was just visible in the starlight. “Yeah, no. I’m not actually—I don’t—“ He trailed off with a defeated sigh. “I’m not actually considering that.”

Bruce nodded and watched the unmoving tree line. “So what _are_ you considering? In my experience, people don’t brood on rooftops for no reason,” Bruce said when Peter blinked at him in surprise. 

Peter stared at the sky, his hands, his feet scuffing against the concrete. He blew out a sigh and his shoulders slumped. “There’s this girl,” he said, making a face that was suggestive of both pain and euphoria, as though he’d stuck a finger into a power socket, only to discover the secrets of the universe in spite of the sting. “We, uh, we’ve been friends a long time, and I really like her. I was thinking of asking her out, maybe trying to make it into something, but I—I don’t know if it will work.” 

“Why is that?” 

“I don’t know what she’ll say. I don’t know whether we’ll go to the same college—and what’s the point if distance breaks us up in a few months? I don’t know whether I should—“ he broke off and frowned. 

“Whether you should—?” Bruce prompted. 

“It might be selfish,” Peter said, punctuated with a stiff shrug. “Getting involved with her. Bringing her into all _this._ ” He gestured vaguely around them. “I just—I just don’t know.” 

Bruce turned to lean against the chest-high wall that surrounded the roof. It felt cold and solid against his back. “Well,” he said slowly. “What do you want?”

“What?” Peter’s face clouded with confusion. 

“What do you want to do?” Bruce repeated. 

“I’m not sure that matters,” Peter started, but Bruce was already shaking his head. 

“I think it does. What do you want? You can ask the question now, or you can ask it sometime in the future. Get it over with now. If you wait, the answer might turn out to be something impossible.”

“I didn’t think people like us were allowed to ask that sort of question.”

“People like us?”

“Superheroes,” Peter replied—and paused. “Mutants,” he admitted after a moment. 

_Monsters_ , Bruce added mentally, and hastily dismissed the thought. He wondered if he ought to feel offended that Peter was so flippantly comparing his own mild genetic mutations to Bruce’s more…extreme condition. But when he searched himself, he didn’t feel any offense. He only felt warm at the thought of being so easily compared to someone else. He smiled, and it was only a little worn at the edge. 

“If you don’t ask the question, who will? There’s a good kind of selfless and a bad kind. Make sure you know the difference. Anyway, knowing what you feel and what you want is a healthy thing. Suppressing it is what’s dangerous.” _I should know_ , he added silently. 

Peter gave a slow nod, his eyes cloudy with thought. “Okay,” he said. He turned back to the stars. Bruce decided to cede the roof to those with more urgent brooding needs and turned back to the door. 

“Dr. Banner?” Peter called. Bruce paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Thanks.” 

“Experience isn’t the kindest teacher,” Bruce answered without looking at him. “You’re better off avoiding it if you can. Good night, Peter.”

“‘Night.”

Bruce’s footsteps rang hollowly on the stairs as he descended. Experience had been one of his only teachers. He’d learned almost too late to work with his heart and mind instead of against them, but these days he could ask himself what he wanted and not immediately reject the answer. 

Bruce paused in the stairwell, listening to Peter’s footsteps on the roof overhead and the warm chatter drifting up from the training rooms one floor down. _What do you want?_ he asked himself.

For most of his life, his answer had been simple—and impossible. _To go back._

His phone chirped; Bruce slipped it from his pocket and found a text from Tony summoning him to the lab. He started down the stairs, the echo of his footsteps hanging in the air with his question. 

The answer arrived in his mind all at once. _To be exactly where I am._

***

In Bruce’s lengthening experience, the years only moved faster with age. His time in the new Avengers facility passed lightning-quick. Peter’s presence shifted and cycled with the flow of each school year. Later, Bruce would remember it mainly in flashes, separate from a definitive timeline. 

He would remember Peter looking gloomily at one of the lab computers as he tried to narrow down his list of universities to apply to. Bruce had caught a glimpse of his search discreetly; Tony snooped over his shoulder without shame. “MIT,” he remarked. “My alma mater. Good choice. When are you going to visit the campus?”

“I’m not,” Peter muttered. “Aunt May can’t get time off for the visitation days.”

Tony glanced at the schedule. “FRIDAY, can you clear all of these days on my calendar? Pick one, Parker, and I’ll take you.” He waved off Peter’s astonished expression.

He would remember Peter talking about whether he’d need to buy a car when he went off to college. Tony had opened his mouth to tell him that he’d buy a car if Peter needed it; Bruce had pulled him aside for a whispered conference before Tony said, “If you save up some money, I’ll match whatever you save.” 

Bruce would remember his own astonishment when Peter handed him an invitation to his high school graduation. “I don’t know if you can come. But you’re invited. Thanks for everything, Dr. Banner.” 

The memories jumbled together in his mind when he and Tony showed up to the graduation ceremony wearing suits and photostatic veils to project false faces to the world. His face itched; Bruce decided the veil was the more uncomfortable garment by a very narrow margin.

Once the commencement address began, Tony slid his program and a pen over to Bruce. There was a Tic-Tac-Toe board scrawled into a blank space on the program and an _X_ placed in the center square. Bruce gave him a dark look. He managed a few seconds of judgmental silence before he gave in and filled in an _O_. Tony switched to Hangman halfway through the speech, and only put his pen back in his pocket when the diplomas were being distributed. His hands twitched like he was fighting the urge to scratch his face. Bruce was struggling with the same urge. Although the main itch he was fighting was somewhere _under_ his skin, and rapidly congregating behind his eyes. 

In the privacy of his thoughts, he wondered what happened if you cried underneath a photostatic veil. 

“Peter Benjamin Parker.” The name they’d been waiting for finally rang out over the speakers, and Peter made the walk across the stage to get his diploma. He was wearing an honor cord. Somewhere in the crowd in front of them, a woman cheered. 

“May Parker,” Tony whispered. “His aunt. His _hot_ aunt,” he amended absently, like it was an important observation. Bruce pretended not to have heard.

Peter smiled, paused for a photo, and left the stage. Once the stream of names ended, the crowd broke into cheers. The graduates stood. Prompted by their principal, they turned their tassels as one. 

“We’re getting old, Bruce,” Tony murmured.

“Maybe,” Bruce answered in a whisper. “But the next generation doesn’t look so bad.” 

Tony’s smile was proud and somber all at once. His photostatic veil flashed faintly and settled again. Ahead of them, mortarboards spun through the air as the crowd gave a final cheer. 

“Well that’s enough of youth and morbidity for one day,” Tony announced once they could hear again. “We’ve got a party to get to. Pepper promised she’d provide adult beverages for those of us who graduated in the twentieth century.”

Peter had plans with friends and family after the ceremony, but Tony had made him promise to come by the old Avengers Tower in the evening. There was a surprise party in the works. A good one too, since Pepper was managing the arrangements.

Bruce scanned for Peter in the crowd. He was surrounded by friends and laughing through a death grip of a hug from his aunt. Bruce smiled. “Tony,” he said, turning to follow him out. “I wouldn’t miss it.” 

**Author's Note:**

> ...yeah, I don't know exactly what this fic is. I hope it was enjoyable, at least! 
> 
> A couple of quick notes: 
> 
> -Peter uses the word “mutant” in this fic. I know the MCU doesn’t use the word “mutant” because of legal issues with the ownership of the X-Men franchise, but since I’m under no such limitations, I did what I wanted. 
> 
> -The idea for the scene of Tony bequeathing Peter to Bruce came out of a ridiculous conversation mrstater and I had one day. ;)
> 
> -Science Bros plus Science bb is way too much fun to write. 
> 
> -Please comment if you liked? 
> 
> Finally, let me say just one last time: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MRSTATER. :D


End file.
